Five 1913 Liberty Head nickels exist. One of the coins is expected to sell for $2.5 million or more in an auction in April. / Heritage Auctions/AP

Written by

Steve Szkotak

Associated Press

‘TROPHY ITEM’

Todd Imhof, executive vice president of Heritage Auctions, said the Walton nickel is likely to attract lofty bids that only a handful of coins have achieved at auction. • A 1933 double eagle, a $20 gold coin, holds the U.S. record: $8 million. • “This is a trophy item that sort of transcends the hobby,” he said. “It’s an interesting part of American history and there are collectors who look for something like this.”

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RICHMOND, VA. — A humble 5-cent coin with a storied past is headed to auction and bidding is expected to top $2 million a century after it was mysteriously minted.

The 1913 Liberty Head nickel is one of only five known to exist, but it’s the coin’s back story that adds to its cachet: It was surreptitiously and illegally struck, discovered in a car wreck that killed its owner, declared a fake, forgotten in a closet for decades and then found to be the real deal.

It is expected to fetch $2.5 million or more when it goes on the auction block April 25 in suburban Chicago.

“Basically a coin with a story and a rarity will trump everything else,” said Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colo., which has held the coin for most of the past 10 years. He expects it could bring more than Heritage Auction’s estimate, perhaps up to $5 million.

“A lot of this is ego,” he said of collectors who could bid for it. “I have one of these and nobody else does.”

The sellers who will split the money equally are four Virginia siblings.

Bogus date on coin

The nickel made its debut in a most unusual way. It was struck at the Philadelphia mint in late 1912, the final year of its issue, but with the year 1913 on its face — the same year the beloved Buffalo Head nickel was introduced.

Mudd said a mint worker named Samuel W. Brown is suspected of producing the coin and altering the die to add the bogus date.

The coins’ existence wasn’t known until Brown offered them for sale at the American Numismatic Association Convention in Chicago in 1920, beyond the statute of limitations. The five remained together under various owners until the set was broken up in 1942.

A North Carolina collector, George O. Walton, purchased one of the coins in the mid-1940s for a reported $3,750. The coin was with him when he was killed in a car crash March 9, 1962, and it was found among hundreds of coins scattered at the crash site.

One of Walton’s heirs, his sister, Melva Givens of Salem, Va., was given the 1913 Liberty nickel after experts declared the coin a fake because of suspicions the date had been altered.

“For whatever reason, she ended up with the coin,” her daughter, Cheryl Myers, said.

Melva Givens put the coin in an envelope and stuck it in a closet, where it stayed for the next 30 years until her death in 1992.

Son looks into story

The coin caught the curiosity of Cheryl Myers’ brother, Ryan Givens, the executor of his mother’s estate.

Givens said a family attorney had heard of the famous 1913 Liberty nickels and asked if he could see the Walton coin. “He looked at it and he told me he’d give me $5,000 for it right there,” he said.

Finally, they brought the coin to the 2003 American Numismatic Association World’s Fair of Money in Baltimore, where the four surviving 1913 Liberty nickels were being exhibited. A team of rare-coin experts concluded it was the long-missing fifth coin.

Since its authentication, the Walton nickel has been on loan to the Colorado Springs museum and has been publicly exhibited nationwide.